Pharmaceutical Executive-07-30-2007

Bill Gates and Warren Buffet: Their legacies will last long after the ink has dried on the latest "World's Richest People" list

Mel Sokotch has seen his share of consumer advertising, having worked in the business for nearly 30 years. He's done time at Foote Cone & Belding and Grey Advertising, and he's handled campaigns for Merck, Pfizer, and Eli Lilly. Most recently, Sokotch penned Shortcuts to the Obvious, a how-to book documenting common marketing mistakes and the ways in which agencies can better position ads. The book is geared toward general consumer advertising, but it includes numerous pharma examples. Pharm Exec caught up with Sokotch to learn more about what marketers can do to build better campaigns.

The US healthcare system may be broken, as such sages as Michael Moore suggest, but it's not likely to be fixed as long as our domestic debate remains stuck on the cost of prescription drugs. Meanwhile, obesity and diabetes are becoming national epidemics. Talk about sicko.

Twelve years is probably "the best deal the industry is going to get," comments former FDA official Scott Gottlieb. "This is a genuine compromise."

Have you heard the rumors that all the drugs have already been discovered? Well, forget it. Maybe some of the low-hanging fruit is gone-but in the last few years, science has opened up thousands of new targets, while new technologies have made it possible to treat disease in unprecedented ways.

Scare stories about antibiotic-resistant bacteria are all too common in the mass media these days. In the United Kingdom alone, the number of deaths from methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus almost doubled between 2001 and 2005 to more than 2,000. The situation with Clostridium difficile is even worse, with UK deaths tripling to almost 4,000 over the same period. The big problem is that the incidence is growing, yet few antibiotics are being developed that will be able to kill the resistant bacteria.

A new class of scales that can help capture drug effects-not necessarily disease impacts, as quality-of-life instruments currently do-will likely be needed to identify the meaning of the drug's benefits to patients

Brand essence is the result of a mixture of empirical facts, brand personality, functional benefits, and feelings that leads to the differentiating brand idea

Avandia's market share erosion was magnified further by the almost complete absence of new prescriptions being switched to Avandia from its competitors. In the weeks before the event, Avandia accounted for more than 20 percent of all switches by primary care physicians